“It was in the Roma. It’s what I know.”
The Roma. It had been a big vampire quarter, once upon a time. They’d all left. Except she remembered hearing a rumor from Archibaldo Ramos, who’d been in hot water—well, more than usual—a couple of years before when they busted him trying to run a prostitution ring near Coyoacán. Cops weren’t very nice when people weren’t paying their bribes, and Ramos thought he could just pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and not have to pay anyone off. Ramos, whom she’d met several times before, was aware she had an interest in vampires and tried to gain brownie points by regaling her with vampire stories. He’d mentioned the vampires of the Roma and hinted one remained there. At the time she thought he was just bullshitting her. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“All right, that’s good. I’ll file your statement,” Ana said.
“What about my money?”
“There’s no reward money.”
“That’s bullshit, lady! Plain bullshit!”
Several officers turned their heads to look at them. Ana could have the guy arrested, but it would mess up her plan. She reached into her wallet and found a bill. “Here’s a hundred and get out,” she said.
The guy took the bill and crumpled it, but he didn’t say anything else and walked out. Ana logged in to one of the databases and scanned it for info. She then grabbed a few papers and went over to the officer who had sent the taxi driver over to her.
“I’m heading out again. If Castillo asks I was sick, all right?”
The officer, who was busy browsing ties on the Internet—she could see the site on the monitor behind him—sneered at Ana. “Suddenly got your period, Aguirre?”
“I think you’re the one who’s PMSing, asshole,” she said.
She was sure that was going to go in her file, under “lack of team spirit and cooperative skill building,” but she didn’t give one fine fuck.
CHAPTER
31
At night, Plaza Garibaldi was overrun with mariachi bands and drunkards. Adventurous tourists walked around, trying to ignore the indigents gathering at the fringes of the plaza. It was a seedy place and no amount of rehabilitation could possibly bring the area under the blanket of respectability, though the city planners had given it a halfhearted attempt, stringing numerous green and red LED lights on buildings in a futile attempt at festivity.
There were a lot of bars near the plaza. The Tenampa stood out due to its yellow fa?ade and its history: it harked back to the ’20s and the story went that the painter Frida Kahlo used to hang out there. It was, like anything else in the area, a little tacky. The Tenampa was also crowded, though Domingo imagined it had been crowded for decades. Three mariachi groups and a jarocho band played in the joint, while roaming mariachis walked around the tables, looking for customers willing to pay for a song.
There were men walking around selling electric shocks, holding up their boxes with jumper cables. It was an attraction imported from up north, from Tijuana and Juárez, but it had caught on with the drunk patrons. A variant was called the Mexican roulette, which had four people passing the contraption around until one of them was zapped.
A mariachi asked them if they wanted a song for what must have been the third time and Bernardino waved him away. The vampire looked miserable, hunched over a glass of mezcal, a hat shadowing his face, but not bothering to take a sip. Domingo was nursing his second beer, too nervous to do much drinking. Atl, on the other hand, had downed three glasses of tequila.
Domingo thought they painted quite the picture: a surly old hunchback in black; a young, bright-eyed woman with her arm in a sling; a teenager in a fancy vest. Though, to be fair, everyone was too drunk to pay them much attention.
“I don’t quite believe it,” Elisa said as she approached their table, a backpack slung over her shoulder and a dainty purse dangling from her right arm. “Bernardino. Here. Aren’t you averse to people and noise … and, well, everything?”
“I would have preferred that we met at a different place, but yes, here,” he replied.
Elisa took off her coat. “I didn’t think you’d get involved in this.”
“Well, I am.”
“What happened to your arm?” Elisa asked, looking at Atl.
“An accident,” she replied.
Elisa pulled up a chair and sat down. She placed the backpack on the table. Atl unzipped it and found a large envelope.
“ID cards. Health cards. Passports,” Atl said, taking each item out. Atl grabbed one of the ID cards and looked at it, then opened the passport. “They look legit.”
“They’ll work,” Elisa said.
“What about the ride? When can you drive us out?” Atl asked, holding up one of the cards, examining it more closely.
Elisa hesitated, sliding her hand across her wrist. “There’s a problem with that.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m not driving you anywhere.”